Chapter Eighteen

The Specter Took Its Time

Victoria ran, each breath snagging in her throat because of her panic. Her heart pounding because of her fear. Fear of Emily, and of Principal Quick’s dead body. Rising panic at the prospect that she had been in such close proximity to Emily when it could have been her all along, killing the girls, and now Principal Quick. Emily had been found in the bathroom, which was awash with Jess’s blood. Sure, Quick had said that Jess had committed suicide, but what if she was merely covering for her star pupil? The thought almost made Victoria gag.

Emily’s name in the principal’s manuscript could only mean one thing. Victoria unpacked the evidence as her mind raced.

Item one: Emily had been valuable to Principal Quick, for whatever whacked-out research number she was doing on her.

Item two: Emily had been an inmate at Greyfriars Reformatory before. Maybe the principal had to hit the pause button on her research when Emily had been released from her care. No way Quick was going to lose out on a chance to make her name with Emily around once again. Hell, she had been nothing short of eager to welcome her back into the fold, from what Victoria recalled of the first couple of days. So what if it meant losing a few no-hoper inmates along the way? Emily was back under Principal Quick’s loony microscope.

Well, Victoria mused, it had backfired on Quick, and spectacularly. Emily had sure made it look like suicide. The bottle. The pills. The only thing that had been missing was a ‘goodbye cruel world’ suicide note. Victoria’s skin crawled at how Emily had feigned her ignorance, and how she had even looked surprised, when they found the principal facedown on her desk like that. But not too surprised. Oh, no. There was something very wrong with Emily, and it began to dawn on Victoria that she was lucky to be alive. How easy would it have been for Emily to kill her while they had been on the smoke run? Maybe Emily was as smart as she was crazy, after all. By having Victoria go with her, and then to discover Jess’s body—

She’s still down there! All bloody.

—down in the basement, it would make her look the total innocent. Then, when Victoria had spoken up about it, she had thought it extremely odd that the principal was so keen to have her show them the closet. The old bitch had been so eager to prove her wrong in front of everyone. The principal had no doubt done it to show Emily that her secret was safe; Victoria was convinced of that now. It was supremely messed up to think that Emily was being allowed to toy with them like that, and to pick them off one by one, while Principal Quick covered up for her each time.

Well, Principal Quick was dead now, too. And good goddamned riddance. Victoria intended to go on living. And she was out of there, just as soon as she—

Victoria stopped and slapped her hand onto her forehead in frustration at her sudden realization.

No keys.

How in the living name of heck was she going to escape without Principal Quick’s keys? She glanced up at the barred window nearest to her in the corridor and, for just a moment, considered doubling back and retracing her steps to Emily. But if she was being brutally honest with herself, she was too scared. Afraid of what Emily might do to her if she showed up at Quick’s office looking for the keys. And that was if Emily hadn’t taken them already. She was too sly not to have done so. Add to that the fact that Victoria didn’t want to be in the principal’s office with the corpse of its owner ever again. She felt a shiver pass over her skin at the memory of that room and its sickly sweet, charnel smell. Victoria gazed at the shadow of the window bars, which stretched across the floor in the moonlight. She refocused on her next best option. There was only one person in the building who could get them out of there. Lena had made light work of lock picking, and hopefully she could do so again. Setting off at a running pace, Victoria headed for the medicine store.

* * *

Breathlessly, she opened the door. It was dark inside. Too dark to see properly.

“Lena?”

Victoria took a couple of tentative steps into the storeroom and heard glass crunch beneath the sole of her shoe.

Not good.

Turning around, Victoria felt along the wall beside the doorframe in search of the light switch. She found it and clicked the light on. Turning back to the room, Victoria let out a strangled cry at what she saw illuminated there.

The floor was awash with dark blood. The storeroom looked more like some nightmarish abattoir. Victoria’s eyes followed the pool of blood to where Lena sat, slumped at the foot of the open med cabinet. She was bleeding out. Jesus, she must have lost liters of the stuff. Syringes littered the floor around Lena’s still body. One still dangled from Lena’s forearm, and Victoria gagged as she took in the carnage that had been visited upon poor Lena’s body. Her arms, her wrists, had been torn to ribbons. It was as though someone—

Lena? No it couldn’t be Lena, no one would do that to herself. Least of all her. She’s tougher than that. Was tougher….

—had been trying to dig something out of Lena’s flesh. Victoria threw up, and she had to grab on to a nearby shelf to stop herself from collapsing in sickness and fear.

She backed, trembling and sobbing, out of the room.

Then, Victoria felt a cool breeze on the back of her neck. She put her hand there. Her hand turned cold, too. Victoria looked down and saw a dark shadow looming all around her. She turned on her heels and saw the girl—

The gray girl!

—standing just a breath away. Her features were indistinct, but Victoria knew it wasn’t Emily. This was something else. Something inhuman. As though hearing her thoughts, the girl reached for her and Victoria saw how emaciated the girl’s fingers looked. Her fingernails were lined with dirt. Like she had crawled out from the grave. As that bony hand reached for her, Victoria screamed. She swatted in terror at the hand and ran away, in fear for her life.

Victoria didn’t stop running until she reached another door, and only then slowed her pace to pass through. It was the sliding door of the refectory. As Victoria slid it shut behind her, she glimpsed the darkly distant figure of the gray girl in the corridor. She was following her.

Victoria hit the light switches and then looked for a latch on the door—

If only I’d grabbed those goddamn keys!

—but there wasn’t one. She glanced frantically around the refectory, her heart beating in time with the flickering of one of the strip lights. All the furniture was bolted to the floor; no way that she could barricade the door. Feeling queasy from fear, Victoria pushed on between the dining tables, and to the back of the room. There was the door to the kitchen. Victoria prayed to gods she didn’t really believe in that the fucker wasn’t locked.

Hallelujah, Amen.

It was unlocked, and she didn’t waste any time ducking inside. The only light in the kitchen came from an emergency exit lamp above a door, its eerie green glow doing nothing to calm Victoria’s frayed nerves.

She dashed to the emergency exit door and slammed both her hands against the metal door release. Then she realized her mistake. The door was chained and padlocked shut from the inside. She would have to confront the girl in the refectory, or find somewhere to hide. But Victoria couldn’t face going back out there. She was too afraid that those claw-like hands might latch on to her.

Mind made up, she skirted around the kitchen’s work surfaces. There were some larger storage bins and cupboards closer to the ovens. Victoria dropped to her haunches and opened one of the cupboards. She might be able to fit inside. Anything other than facing the apparition that had been following her since she’d found Lena’s bleeding body. Anything to avoid a similar fate at those cold, dead hands.

There was a flicker, followed by a flash. Victoria thought it might be a lightning storm – and then she remembered that the kitchen was windowless. The flickering continued, along with the tink-tink sound of the fluorescent lighting tubes overhead, and she realized that someone had turned the light on in the kitchen. She listened intently and heard the faint creak of the door as it closed. She was still facing the kitchen cupboard.

Tink-tink.

Her heart had almost stopped beating in her chest, she was so terrified. Too frightened now even to look, Victoria clamped her eyes shut. She felt warm tears spill down her cheeks. Heard a distant whimper, and then realized it was her own voice. She could feel that chill in the air again, could feel it penetrating her skin. She knew what was coming, and every second was loaded with dread as it passed.

Tink-tink. Buzz.

The specter took its time.

Cold fingers brushed Victoria’s cheek and she screamed. She felt those fingers wrap around her face, on either side. Her scream sputtered and died in her throat as she felt her head being twisted around.

And Victoria opened her eyes.

* * *

She sat up in bed, all pink pastel and plush throw cushions.

She looked around at all her gender-stereotyped belongings, neatly laid out on cerise shelves. The little alarm clock, also pink, told her it was still nighttime. Just before one a.m.

A pervasive, unpleasant smell made her nose wrinkle.

Confused by the strange odor, and feeling half-asleep, she walked over to where her robe was hanging. Her toes thudded against something heavy and soft on the carpeted floor. Strange. Why was her dad sleeping facedown on her floor like that? Weirdly, her gymnastics trophy lay on the floor too, by his side. She course-corrected and walked around his ever-so-still body, so as not to wake him.

Victoria took her robe down from the little plastic hook on the back of the door. She clambered into her robe. Following the hissing sound, she drifted out of the room.

Holding on to the handrail because she was feeling so woozy, Victoria yawned her way downstairs and headed for the kitchen. She passed the line of framed photo portraits on the wall. A half-dozen versions of herself, pictured through the years from chubby-cheeked kid to young adult. Smiling. But not really smiling.

Victoria’s throat was dry and she needed a glass of cool water. She entered the kitchen. The lights had been left on, their reflections gleaming off the polished tile floor. Squeaky clean, just how Mom liked it. But instead of the quiet of the hour, Victoria could hear an intense hissing sound. As she moved into the domestic space, she saw her mother sitting on a breakfast stool. Her upper body lay slumped across the kitchen island, with a near-empty liquor bottle next to her. She appeared to be unconscious.

Victoria yawned, and a bad taste clung to the back of her throat. She really did need that glass of water. Strange, she thought she had walked to the kitchen sink, and yet here she was, over by the cooking range. Her limbs were so very heavy, and she felt so tired all of a sudden. Victoria felt something cold and hard in her hand and looked down to see she had turned one of the gas dials. Matter of fact, they were all open. The hissing sound intensified, along with the toxic levels of dryness clutching at her throat.

She approached the kitchen island and reached out a leaden hand in the direction of her mother. All the while the hissing grew louder and louder. She was standing right next to her mom now. Feeling lightheaded, Victoria sat down beside her. She touched her mom’s shoulder. But her mom did not react. Victoria pulled her mother’s shoulder back, gently but firmly. Her mom’s head lolled over to one side. Yellow streaks of vomit glistened on her exposed cheek. Her eyes were fixed open in a sightless gaze.

All that Victoria could hear was the hissing.

Victoria stood up, walked from the kitchen to the back door, and out onto the rear porch. She heard the wooden gate bang shut behind her, though she didn’t remember even passing through it. She was halfway across the front lawn when the blast knocked her from her feet and onto her face. She tasted dirt and her nose felt numb from the impact. A sharper taste than that of the soil invaded her senses. Her nose was bleeding into her mouth. She liked the taste. Savored it.

Victoria rolled over onto her back, which felt oddly numb. She wondered if the skin had been burned away from her back. It certainly smelled as though it had. Meat residue blackening on a summer barbeque. She lay there, propped up on her elbows like a sunbather, and watched the house go up in a massively glorious ball of flame. The gas explosion rocked the earth beneath her and she laughed. She thought of the line of photographs at the foot of the stairs. Pictured them peeling and disintegrating in the heat and the flames. All those past versions of her, gone forever.

She watched the house burn until her eyes stung. And then she watched it some more. When the smoke finally made her blink, she felt tears at the corners of her eyes. She wondered if her father was still conscious even as his body burned, facedown on the floor of the bedroom in which he had hurt her, so many times. She hoped so. Her mom was already dead before the gas ignited, which seemed apt somehow. Mom had lived her life in ignorance, always looking the other way. Never listening to what Victoria had so desperately tried to tell her. Not a care to notice the warning signs. Her last voyage to the bottom of a liquor bottle had taken her down, long before her cremation.

As the heat from the fire began to dry the tears on Victoria’s face, she realized without doubt that they were tears of joy.

She blinked, and then opened her eyes.

The house had gone, the blaze replaced by a halo of light from the reformatory kitchen overheads. Cold breath cooled her face and her eyes filled with abject terror at the sight of the gray girl’s fathomless, empty eyes staring into her own.